


Hittin' Jet With the Best of 'Em

by orphan_account



Series: Modern Medicine [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Explicit Language, Game Spoilers, M/M, Post-Nuclear War, Recreational Drug Use, References to Drugs, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-03 01:54:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6591889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hancock was grinning at him, fierce and alive. “We’re fucked!” He shouted in Nate’s ear, over the bursting cough of a Flamer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hittin' Jet With the Best of 'Em

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hokkaido_Ito](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokkaido_Ito/gifts).



> Originally written for my other half, with their favorite character. Thanks for proofreading all my fic, even the terrible stuff ;c

   Everything was so different now.

  
   And not just all the mutation, and decay, and the radiation storms. Nate had been a nuclear physics major, with a biology minor, and he’d received that degree just in time to stick it in a drawer and head to war. Only his personal addiction to sweat and blood and responsibility had kept him there, in the army, slowly climbing rank and position by the simple act of always being the last man standing. He’d stay until he got burned, but he never tired of the fight.

  
   Maybe he was always meant to be here.

  
   A bullet whizzed over his head, followed by a huge spout of flame beside the lee of the rock he was crouched behind. Next to him Hancock was reloading his shotgun and it was only because of the jet that Nate could see the fine tremor in his hands.

  
   Probably the psycho he’d picked off that Raider this morning. Nate had tried to tell him it looked like a bigger hit than normal, but Hancock had shrugged and poured it in his vein, one hand still aiming his piss into the bushes. Hancock knew how to handle his shit, and Nate had speculated before that the same catalyst for his transformation into a ghoul and therefore immortal, had made him more resistant to harm.

  
   Still appearing to move as though through water, Hancock stood and fired over the lip of stone face, the double roar of his shotgun setting Nate’s teeth on edge.

  
   He’d been winding the damn laser musket he’d picked up earlier, off the same Raider who’d given Hancock his free trip. That cursed fucking Raider, who’d attacked out of nowhere as they were breaking camp this morning. Nate still shirtless from his shower the night before, Hancock barely picking at his pork n’ beans. Crazy to still be eating an animal Nate wasn’t sure even existed anymore.

  
   Halfway through the fight and the raider, he'd gained the strength of a Brahmin, giving them an hour long scramble.By the time they’d reached the Red Rocket trading post just before Sanctuary it was almost twelve noon, and Hancock was being a miserable, whiny shit and it was taking Nate a lot of restraint not to tell him so. Restraint and a lot of jet.

  
   Which had been the only other thing of value the Raider had on him this morning besides the laser musket he was now cursed with, all other guns having failed him.

  
   Nate angled his arm around the natural stone ledge and gave a few covering shots, enough for Hancock to duck back down safely, not to do any real damage. Nate could hear Codsworth’s manic shit-talk like dream speech under the gunfire, whirling twenty feet away and giving the small army of Raiders and Supermutants hell.

  
   Hancock was grinning at him, fierce and alive.

  
   “We’re fucked!” He shouted in Nate’s ear, over the bursting cough of a Flamer.

  
   Nate nodded back, more grimly. They were fucked. They’d been back a half hour, exhausted from hunting the molerats that had been ravaging the communal gardens, and chewing on Sturges pet projects.

  
   ‘Not you know, the necessary ones. I bury those.” Sturges had said, and Hancock had nodded seriously, the fingers of his right hand tapping and tapping on the hilt of his sword. They’d been sitting on Mama Murphy’s porch. Nate had started visiting the house after her passing, leaving flowers, playing cards or just drinking some whiskey and passing the hot dry days. After she had pushed herself so hard for them, it felt unfinished without her sitting in her chair at the end of the cul-de-sac.

  
   Hancock claimed not to understand, but he’d still sat with him most evenings. Mama Murphy would have just loved him.

  
   But once Hancock had shown he was safe to bother in the evenings, everyone else in the blasted wasteland started showing up. Not all at once, but over days, then weeks, Mama Murphy’s porch at sunset was the place to talk Nate into doing stupid shit he didn’t want to do, when he could be laying around, eating mutfruit and reading comics.

 

   Stupid shit like hunting down a a pack of intelligent, radiated, rabid Molerats.

  
   ‘So they’re unnecessary cables?’ And Nate covered his smile by shoveling another lump of noodles into his mouth.

  
   ‘Well, I wouldn’t say that-’ Sturges had begun, a little defensively, when Nate sighed, putting the dregs of his noodles aside.

  
   ‘Look, what exactly are you expecting us to do here? Go into the woods, and track-somehow-an entire pack of Molerats clever enough to evade Long’s garden traps?’

  
   See, and honestly they were fucked the second Sturges started smiling.

  
   It had taken them three days to track those Molerats back to their lair. Three days of hiking through the worst of the wilderness surrounding Sanctuary.Whenever they’d first moved in, Nora had been worried about being so far away from the city, a ten minute ambulance ride to the closest hospital.She’d been right, as always. 288 years later, and she still knew more than him. It was what he got for marrying a lawyer.

  
   Hancock had been fine the first two days, chipper as a fucking chipmunk, singing and rustling the bushes with the point of his sword.They even fucked a couple times, and then the third day he grazed his ankle stepping on a a broken bear trap, and even stimpaks and a back rub later, he was still pissed.

  
   The molerats were holed up in a cave with a big Yao Guai. Nate loved the community spirit, but hated the three bite marks, and dash on the head he received for his troubles.

  
   The way home had been shorter, as they didn’t have to follow the Molerats furiously winding path, and could just follow the asphalt.  
Hancock had a handful of dice, and a gold hooped earring scavenged from the cave and he kept rattling the dice over and over in his palms, while Nate sullenly drank some whiskey behind him.

  
   The sun was out in full force, and on the old highway there was no shade cover.The last stimpak had gone to Hancock’s ankle, and by the time they called it quits for the night, Nate was barely verbal.

  
   It was Hancock who had found the rest stop which had some natural water pressure in the bathroom.Enough to take a shower, in a shower stall, and wasn’t that a damn miracle. Nate had only been in there for a few minutes, before Hancock was crowding him up against the wall, his body rough and foreign with only the water to keep them separate. His voice was a gruff ‘C’mere.’ in Nate’s ear but Nate went, bowing his neck, and spreading his legs for Hancock’s hard, eager fingers, nothing but the water to help ease the needy push of his cock.

  
   It was a good enough hurt to forget the stinging from his bites, and the exhaustion from the sun.

  
   Nothing could make him forget Nora’s face, when Kellog was ripping Shaun out of her arms. It was only Hancock, and the desperate reliance of the commonwealth citizenship that kept him going.

  
   Made him glad they hadn’t just died in the blast.

  
   “Look alive, General!” Hancock screamed, grabbing Nate’s arm and pulling. Nate felt like a yo-yo and that was the problem with Jet, it was so easy to get lost in. You had all the time in the fucking world, so a few irrelevant thoughts seemed fine.

  
   He was running forward, stumbling into flight like his feet were blind but the Psycho was driving Hancock now, and his movements were precise, his grip a lock on Nate’s arm.

  
   Nora had clutched him so tight as they descended into the vault, the world above them exploding.

  
   The grenade that had been tossed over their cover exploded with a clap like thunder, and Nate’s feet knew how to run even if he was just along for the ride.

  
   Hancock was leading them away from the crest, falling back to Sanctuary’s fence line and that was a bad sign. Mayor Hancock protected the people first, even if that meant fighting out in the fucking open, under-armed.

  
   Asshole.

  
   He was driving them toward the defense turrets, and Nate’s energy was lagging. His fucking molerat bites ached and more explosions coming up behind them meant it wasn’t one raider with a frag; it was a fucking Supe with a grenade launcher and they were so fucked.

  
   Nate thought briefly and hysterically of three days ago when him and Hancock had cordially agreed they didn’t need the power armor for a few molerats.

  
   They were both assholes.

  
   “We’re assholes.” Nate panted, and Hancock looked back at him incredulously and running head first off the Jet and into real time was like hitting a brick wall.

  
   Nate’s vision grayed, and he stumbled, knocking into Hancock, who grabbed him and propelled him expertly back into a run. Nate knew it was the psycho, but Hancock needed to stop baby-sitting dope heads.

  
   “You’re so fucking high.” Hancock hissed, looking at him balefully out from under his peaked hat.

  
   Because Nate had gone to sleep, let two hundred years pass, and was now existing in a new hell involving loving the man in the fucking tricorn.

  
   “You shouldn’t have taken all that Jet.” Hancock muttered, shaking his shoulder. “I thought it as too big a hit.”

  
   “You-” said Nate, but a high-pitched whine to his left made him swerve instinctively, crashing into Hancock, turning them to the right as a missile whizzed past, exploding the Supermutant behind them with a meaty grunt.

  
   In the momentary quiet, from up top the guard tower, Marcy Long shouted, “Get in here! Did you idiots even find those molerats, or just your own assholes?”

  
   Nate groaned just as Hancock burst into manic, riotous laughter.

  
   “Junkies!” Marcy shouted, and Nate was up before Hancock pulling the other man to his feet, and setting a brisk pace to Sanctuary’s walls.

  
   Of course it was Marcy on the tower, with Preston out as acting-General. He refused to take the General title, but ended up doing all the work anyway. Nate was always on the road, as apparently he was the only man able to travel as an emissary and survive.His punishment for the lives he took in Russia and Germany was to be a diplomat and pack-mule to all around him.

  
   They reached the wall, Hancock pounding loud fists into the metal even as it opened from the inside.

  
   “Sound the alarm!” He shouted, immediately and Marcy came clanking down the stairs in full power armor, a missile launcher in one arm, a mini gun in the other.

  
   So they’d gotten into his secret cache. All he could hope was that they hadn’t messed up his comics.

  
   “Shut up!” Her voice was just as sharp through the power armors speakers. “They’ve been attacking for days, while you idiots played in the woods.”

  
   “We weren’t really playing in the woods.” Nate said. “We killed eight molerats, and a Yao-”

  
   “Molerats? I’m up to my tits in Supermutants, Preston is later than you shits, and Sturges has been acting mayor, and you want to tell me about mole-”

  
   “Marcy.” Nate spoke and even Hancock was looking at him now, and why did people respond to him that way, as though he knew what the hell he was doing in this irradiated wasteland more than any other Pip-boy. “Calm down. We’re here now. Has any one been hurt?”

  
   Even through the speakers, and the dull pop of gunfire in the distance the change in Marcy’s voice was audible.

  
   “Surprisingly no, General. Even with their numbers, they’d stayed on the fringes, just shooting explosives at our walls.” She took a deep breath, and Nate began scanning the crates near the front door for a better gun while she debriefed. “Sturges built ‘em strong.”

  
   Which means Sturges couldn’t have done that bad of a job, and he was looking for anything really, anything but a fucking laser musk-

  
   Yes!

  
   Fusion cells, beautiful fusion cells, and Hancock watched Nate fill his pockets with a sideways smile.

  
   “We were actually holding them off, but today they kept getting antsier, like they were waiting for something, and when it hit eleven they just attacked.”

  
   “The raider!” said Hancock, and Nate hooked a stimpak expertly to his own vein and flew, his body reviving in a flush, his breathing growing calmer, the sweat covering him suddenly a secondary concern.

  
   “Wonder why him.” Nate said, jogging up the guard tower stairs. From here he could see the whole embankment. They were on the near side of the river, and were re-grouping after having chased Nate and Hancock toward the wall.

  
   “We helped ourselves leading them here.” Nate said gleefully, lining up his first shot. The raider was dead before he could move, and Nate took calm aim as the others scattered. The laser rifle felt like an extension of his arm, a feeling that had kept him in the army climbing the ranks when he had a beautiful wife, and a life waiting for him.

  
   “Pow pow!” Hancock said, his rough voice sing-song in the mid-afternoon sunshine, as Nate picked off another raider, like he was shooting bottles off a fence.

  
   And somehow, everything was beautiful.

  
   “Gimme some draw fire!” Hancock said. “Before I pop.”

  
   Nate rolled his eyes as Hancock waggled his grenade at him, using the smooth pulse of the laser fire to chase two Supermutants from the bush. What he would have given for one of these on the field before.

  
   Hancock tossed his grenade with a whoop, and he must have been holding it with the pin out, because it exploded right between them, sending wet green chunks everywhere.

  
   “I feel better.” Nate said, and he hunched forward, scoping the few remaining raiders, who had wised up and were hiding behind a broken gate.

  
   “That’s modern medicine for you.” Hancock said, and Nate laughed, bright and open in the sun, and kissed him, despite Marcy behind him, the Supermutant suicider in front of them, or all their ghosts.

  
   “I’m so high.” said Nate, and Hancock laughed and laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow your [marker](honeyedlion.tumblr.com), Pip-boy.


End file.
